


"Like I Said" and Coda

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Alien Flora & Fauna, Alien Planet, Angst and Humor, Drama, F/M, Humor, Internal Monologue, Introspection, Light Angst, POV Rose, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1434364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not any normal bloke. He's a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord who's gonna live practically forever and doesn't want to have to bury her in maybe seventy years and then be alone in a way that's so much worse once he finally knows what living is 'cause it's only ever being with her, running through the day holding her hand and at night feeling her wrapped around him, not just in his dreams, and him burning in her heat. He said that, and then he blushed and swore and turned and ran.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Like I Said" and Coda

**Author's Note:**

> These companion pieces were written in 2012 for jessalrynn, for her birthday. All my thanks to bhb for Stanley Glacier. I will never forget.

 

 

  

  

  **"Like I said…"**

 

The Doctor has always been moody. They've argued before, yeah; and he's even sulked off in a right Doctor snit before too.

But this time is different. This time he'd let slip how much he's in love with her and why he can't be with her. And then he just swanned off, leaving her with her jaw hanging, her mind in a tangle of confusion and her knickers in a damp tangle of desire.

Fine! Let the stupid sod go have his bloody self-indulgent tantrum, and just leave her to rant and fume, fantasize a happily ever after, and then fume and rant some more in peace.

Of course she's bleedin' angry!  Any _normal_ bloke would just have said there they were the two of them, always putting their lives on the line for the good of the universe when they didn't know what would come of it... they belonged together, they did, in every way they could, and they should stop wasting the precious time that was left… so how 'bout it, girl, kit off.

But he's not any normal bloke. He's a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord who's gonna live practically forever and doesn't want to have to bury her in maybe seventy years and then be alone in a way that's so much worse once he finally knows what living is 'cause it's only ever being with her, running through the day holding her hand and at night feeling her wrapped around him, not just in his dreams, and him burning in her heat. He said that, and then he blushed and swore and turned and ran.

And this is the first time he's left her alone for hours when one of them wasn't already dangerously in need of rescuing. And it's the first time she's been this worried. She's checked outside so many times she's lost count, and she would have been out looking for him already if the blizzard hadn't hit.

She thinks if he is just being embarrassed and sulking she'll kill him for worrying her like this. If he's injured or–no! He admitted to her that she's his universe then scarpered; if _anything_ has the right to kill him, it's her. She knows she shouldn't worry–hadn't he just told her he's practically indestructible, that if he's seriously injured or in mortal danger his body does this Time Lord _shazzam_ thing and rebuilds itself _presto chango_ (and isn't she just gonna kill him for that too, talking down to her like that!)

What if he's not gonna come back for her? No, he'll come back; regardless of what happens between her and him, he'll always come back for the TARDIS. But she's tired of waiting. She's got her hoodie and denims on over the black lace teddy she'd changed into during her _give the sod an argument he won't want to run away from_ phase, and the thermal underwear she'd slipped on when dread trumped desire. She adds the down vest and expedition gear that's been by the door for two hours give or take, hefts the backpack containing two emergency foil blankets, lightweight easy-pack harness sled, high-energy bars, her personal survival kit and some other stuff, and as much water as she can carry and still move fast–a pint a pound isn't just a rhyme, and she's already feeling the weight; she's gonna make him get her a trans-dimensional backpack when they get back, when. Slinging compass, flashlights, and lightweight ice pick over her neck, she takes her trekking poles and heads out. She doesn't know if she'll have to save his worthless male hide or decide to skin it off him. But she knows she loves him more than life.

There is nothing to indicate which way he headed, but as she peers around, her eyes are drawn to the brolly of stars on the clear black dome of space that makes her think of him and beauty and belonging, and a future together with him; and she gets a silly stupid feelin' she can't explain, but she heads due east, straight toward a constellation that looks like a long-stemmed rose bud blooming low on the eastern horizon. She moves mindfully but quickly, careful of her footing on the treacherous ice. If she falls and hurts herself, he could be lost. Every one hundred and fifty paces she takes a compass reading and knocks a small metal stake into the glacier.

Intermittent snows obscure the horizon and blur the most distant stars in the slowly rising flower; the piercing, frigid wind burns and smarts like a hail of buckshot even through her face mask. Her eyes water and the tears freeze on the inside of the goggles, and he's been gone five hours, it's getting dark, the temperature is falling even more, and he has nothing to protect him but his leather jacket, superior Time Lord physiology, the left-over heat of their argument and his alien emotions, and his thick stupid skull.

~

She finds him finally, and it's a good thing because a glacier python has found him too. He isn't moving, but that doesn't mean anything, _she refuses t_ o let it mean anything.

The python swizzles through the soft crackle of grainy snow cover with an unhurried grace that could be fascinating and beautiful if it wasn't her Doctor that it was heading for. She spots a large chunk of ice near the Doctor's b... near the Doctor. Her crampons allow her to hurry over the ice to him with more dumb good luck than expertise, and she imagines the scolding she'd get if he saw.

She heaves the chunk of ice at the python. The throw is bloody accurate and she gives a silent thanks for all the experience she got throwing darts with Mickey and his mates down at the pub. The python skates away, but she knows it's just regrouping. The four metre long heat-seeking carnivore is as scary-looking as its Earth namesake, at least as dangerous, and faster, even injured like it is. She knows that it'll be faster than she when it comes down to that; but she's bought herself enough time to find the sonic in one of the Doctor's pockets.

One eye on the glacier python, one on the sonic, she's grumbling her way through the settings when she hears the scratching of dry pellet snow on ice behind her and turns, slowly slipping out of her backpack. Another glacier python has joined the hunt. A lot of something red and mostly liquid is dripping out from between its hugely dislocated jaws. She gets the outrageous idea that the python must be drooling in anticipation of a delectable Doctor popsicle to eat. An image flies through her head too fast to dampen her knickers but it does make her grin, and she slams the backpack into its jaw, sending it flying into next Wednesday. Must have been the weight of the flashlight and water that did it–- the crack of metal on bone is bloody fantastic in the godless silence.

Something she does with the sonic screwdriver seems to be keeping the pythons back; she doesn't know what and she doesn't particularly care as long as they stay away.

She wants to yell at him. She wants to lash out and beat her fists against his wayward hearts. She wants to slip her hands inside his leather jacket beneath his jumper, learn the feel of his naked skin, and cover his face with hot kisses. She wants to follow that narrow trail of hair that's given her hours and hours of fantasies just from watchin' him work up on his bloody ladder–follow it from his navel down, all the way down, first with her fingertips and then with her lips, and make him need her. Right now though, she wants him to wake up.

The bump on his head looks nasty, but it's already been iced and there's nothing more she can do until they get to the TARDIS. The angry cuts on his face, head, and hands have stopped bleeding, and she leaves the dried blood to keep the wounds sealed. His skin and clothing are coated in a thin layer of frost that tells her brain more than her heart wants to hear. She removes it carefully, checking for frostbite, and slips thermal mittens over his cold hands. Stupid ape that she is, she's forgotten a neck brace, and water ruined the self-sticking bandages when a bottle cracked open. There are only a couple of tampons left in her survival kit, so she'll use the food bars as well. The material of her teddy is soft and strong; opening the seams gets her a decent length of bandaging. The black silk wrapped around the tampons and food bars looks ridiculous, yeah; but it's an effective immobilization and support of the Doctor's neck if she does say so herself.

He wakes only to yell out violently in his language when she starts to move him onto the foil blankets. His unfocused eyes don't actually see her; almost immediately they close and he falls unconscious again. That's when she starts to cry. Frozen snot is disgusting, no matter what planet you're on. She wipes her nose on her sleeve and cracks the frozen crap off. She seals the foil around him like a cocoon but then worries and opens it around his face; it wouldn't do to suffocate him before she can get him back to the TARDIS and throttle him. 'Sides, if she forces him into that _shazzam chango_ of his, he'll never let her live it down. She wants to laugh at the idea, but something tells her if she starts she won't stop. He doesn't make a sound when she harnesses him onto the unfolded sled, but she's too empty to cry.

She puts her facemask on him; takes a breath, a sip of water; adjusts her goggles. She gets her bearing from the flower constellation (Or maybe she simply wants to look at the rose of stars and feel special; she'll take her readings off the compass). It's risen further above the horizon and rotated on the celestial sphere. Now the stem is higher than the bud, pointing up and southeast, and the constellation looks less like a rosebud and more like something that makes her giggle, but she's able to stop. She turns her back on the constellation, takes the first compass reading. She throws the backpack on over her chest, lifts the sled full of Time Lord, checks the compass again, and starts off to find the first of the stakes she's left in the ice.

The lightweight harness sled fights her obstinately in the grainy snow, and she can barely control it on smooth ice. When it almost flips them into a chasm, she's had it. She remembers something from a movie she'd seen and it's certainly better than almost losing them into a bottomless hole in the glacier, so she unwraps his outer blanket then lays her poles on it, one on either side of him, his shoulders' width apart. Rolling him side to side carefully, she gets the strong alien material sealed into a firm double layer beneath him. He is mumbling in his language, but he hasn't woken up and he hasn't yelled out again; so that's good. Or not. It hurts too much to drag the litter with the Doctor's dead weight by just the poles, so she makes a denim sling to go around her pelvis and attach to the litter (All of time and space and nothing can out-achieve the safety pin and crazy glue). Maybe it would have been more logical to slip off his denims, since he's got his warm blanket cocoon; but she's sure he's peacefully asleep now, not unconscious. And she really doesn't want she just couldn't if he isn't wearing cause she's wondered and fantasized something awful but why bother him he's comfortable and her parka is long and she's hot from all the walking and pulling, nothing more, and needs to cool off but that's not and if he isn't wearing but she's warm enough–  . . . _Huh_. . . Thank you Doctor for that momentary loss of higher brain function.

It's gotta be serendipity that while she's trying to talk herself into suffering the sled, which now has the mass of a dwarf star, rather than leaving it to pollute the planet, this web-toed cat with fangs and a seriously scary underbite shows up and gives her a really good use for it. The throw is not as impressive as her pitch of the ice chunk had been, but puss in snowshoes is a lot more massive than the snake. So she has to disturb the Doctor anyway, to yank out one of the poles to finish it off. When she pulls the pole out of the cat, the blood splatter looks as if someone had dropped chocolate ice cream on the ice. She won't feel sorry for her kill for even a moment–it deserved what it got for going after her Doctor; and the growing pool of blood would tempt any other meddlesome predators sooner than a scabbing-over Time Lord would, and that should be long enough for her to get him back to the TARDIS.

She is grateful for the light of the twin moons and the stars. From time to time she turns to look up at the constellation that led her to the Doctor. Now that it's risen and its stem is curving high above the oval bud, it looks to her more like a stellar hard-on, or maybe a sperm on a mission to the planet. She laughs easily, and it feels good. She minds her steps carefully, looks around for no more surprises, watches the stars travel the sky, and thinks about him--sometimes, admittedly, not too kindly or quietly or reasonably. She wonders what facing him tomorrow will be like.

His breathing is slower than usual and more shallow, and she wonders if he's starting that _shazzam presto chango_ thingy he said Time Lords do. The idea of it scares her silly. She doesn't really know what to expect, but from what he didn't tell her, the process doesn't sound like a picnic on Barcelona. Damn his taciturn, secretive, alien superiority complex! She wonders if he could survive his hearts stopping. Or freezing. Or being eaten by those creatures like the one that proved the sled more useful for defending him than for carrying him. She knows how lucky they are that the sonic worked against its pack too, and she vows to make him tell her what that setting does.

Since she's been babbling to the unresponsive sod — to herself, anyway–for the past hour or so, she figures she might as well do it more sanely. "Twenty questions, Doctor, you bloody stupid arse, and show a bit more interest in what I'm sayin' this time around, eh? Will being eaten by pythons make you go _shazzam presto chango_? How about accidentally sledding into a hole in a glacier and breaking your neck? Being ripped apart by sabre-toothed cats? Eaten alive? What about laughing yourself into apoplexy at the sight of a stupid ape in long johns, hiking boots, and goggles? Slapped into the next century? Can whatever you'd better not be doing to yourself now be stopped once it starts? Would the new you feel everything the old you feels but doesn't want to? Would he still be an unresponsive sod? Do you really love me, Doctor? Do you really want to make love to me?" She sighs. "Well, ok, how about when you wake up, does that work for you? 'Cause it works for me. Bloody great alien wanker, don't you know how much I love you!"

He mumbles something and she stops her runaway mouth. Bugger.

"Doctor?"

~

By the time they get back to the TARDIS, his breathing has normalized, his heartsbeats feel like she's used to when he hugs her, and his body temperature is back to smug superior Time Lord cool. She closes the doors and drops to the floor beside him. Stroking his cheek, she wonders again if his body can stop a _shazzam_ , but then he wakes and sees her and smiles.

"I shouldn't have run off, Rose. I'm sorry."

"It's ok, Doctor," she shrugs.

"Yeah, Rose? Then why am I inside silver lame' bunting lookin' like Elvis Presley's pet worm?"

She frees him and helps him up; and before she can move away, his hand is cupping her cheek. It's warmer than she is, his palm. It burns into her, like his eyes.

"Rose," he says in that way he has, "thank you."

"All part of the service," she grins, but she can barely catch her breath. Isn't he the one who's supposed to be shivering?

He caresses her face, frowns, runs his hands down her arms, takes her hands. "You sure you're ok?"

She tells him she's just a little stiff and a little cold, but really ok; better'n him, she'd wager.

He nods at that. "Things after I... uh... left are a bit hazy. Where'd you find me?"

"Not too far from here."

What else is she gonna say? She's already decided she won’t tell him how close she came to losing him. It wouldn't do either of them any good, and she's too tired and sore and cold for another argument. He tells her he can handle things from here and thanks her. Since he won't quite look at her, she says she's going to take a hot shower. She can tell he's concerned about her, still, and she says she's fine, just tired, and she'll see him tomorrow.

"Rose," he stutters, "I'm sorry, but I can't... if you, I just …"

She stops and looks back at him. "It's ok, Doctor, I understand why you can't let yourself be with me that way, I really do. It's like you said. We'd have such a short time together, it would just make it hurt more when I'm gone. I'd hate to outlive you too. Let's forget today happened."

But she won't forget. She'll remember what he said, word for word, until the day she dies. And she'll remember what almost happened to him and the terror in her as she searched the glacier. She vows to stay with him for what she hopes will be a lot more than seventy years; although not for the end of it, if she can tell she's going. She won't do that to him, not when he is so adamantly against being with her at her death. But she thinks–no, she knows that if he goes first, although it will kill her to lose him, she wants him in her arms when he does. 'Cause dying's gonna be the only reason she'll ever let him go. Anything else is gonna be a fight she intends to win.

She spends a lot of time in a hot shower, maybe getting warmth back into her bones, maybe avoiding seeing him, though she knows she really should check on him and fix him tea and maybe something to eat. Why is it that blokes can't ever take care of themselves right, even the ones who can save the universe? When she hears the knock on her bathroom door, her knees go weak with dread and she has to grab for the showerhead and the wall, 'cause it can only be the Doctor and he's gotta be in trouble to have come here, after everything 'n all. She yells for him to come in. She should have gone with him to medbay, she knows better than to just accept it when the Doctor says he's ok.

He opens the bathroom door at the same time she opens her shower door. He stands in the threshold just looking at her blankly. She sees the moment he realizes she's naked–of course she is, what else would she be, in her shower. His eyes grab hers. Something tightens 'round her throat, 'round her heart, round something inside her that's just gonna explode, but she's not sure if it's with fear or… something else.  "Doctor," she asks as she quickly wraps a towel around herself, "what's wrong?"

He doesn't answer though his eyes release her.

He makes no move to go.

 

~~

 

 

 

**Coda** **(She said)**

  

The Doctor pushed himself up to full awareness as soon as he realized he was in the TARDIS. When his eyes opened to Rose's worried frown, he smiled quick reassurance that he was fine and apologized for his incredible stupidity. Rose was still speaking to him, still rolled her eyes at his snarky comments, so he figured he must not have been a total arse. She'd been incredibly brave, going onto the R'rung Ice Fields after him. That was his Rose… incredibly brave. The Doctor cupped Rose Tyler's cheek and thanked her. The words didn't seem enough; but he, great impressive Time Lord, didn't have a clue what else to say.

After Rose left, the Doctor dropped his jacket over the back of the jump seat and gingerly removed the neck support that she had put on him. Rose's ingenuity in improvising splints made him grin appreciatively. Her ingenuity in improvising bandaging made him dizzy. He balled up the long strip of translucent black silk that looked like the remains of a nightgown and smelled like Rose, and buried his face in it.

A fireball of pain exploded in his neck, down into his heels, almost taking the Doctor to his knees. He grabbed the jump seat just in time, eased himself into it, and breathed through the pain. He really needed to address that pinched nerve right away; instead, he raised the handful of black silk to his face and held it there for a moment, for just one moment or maybe a bit longer, inhaling Rose's lingering fragrance, and letting himself think about the warmth of her body permeating it, imagine the feel of it fluttering over his fingers as he slid his hands under the diaphanous material and slowly worked it up her body.

He didn't need medbay, just the sonic screwdriver then a shower and some rest–but Rassilon, he was a bit of a mess, wasn't he? After he fixed what needed fixing, the Doctor sonicked the seams of the bandaging back together. He'd been right: it was a gown of some sort; Rose Tyler's black, short, skimpy, small (alluring, enticing, revealing, seductive) nightgown. He realized how much of her it wouldn't cover. He bowed his head into his hands, into a ball of silk, and the pain was nothing the sonic screwdriver could fix. Rassilon, he was a mess.

As he went to pick up Rose's backpack, the Doctor frowned at the red smear that the sonic told him was blood though neither Rose's nor his. He sonicked the bag clean and gingerly lifted it onto the jump seat for Rose to find, then eased himself down next to it with a sigh. Stroking the backpack idly, the Doctor tried to figure what to say to Rose in the morning, wondered what they could say to each other–tomorrow, the next day, the next. His big mouth! Rassilon, how could he have done something so stupid! He didn't know what he would do when he lost...when Rose wasn't with him and he was... No, he couldn't say the words, he couldn't bear thinking about how soon he would lose her.

The sight of the makeshift litter stirred a jumble of emotions that the Doctor badly wanted to ignore. Blood was caked along the business end of one of the poles, and he saw another bit of it on the blanket he'd been wrapped in. The Doctor's hearts stuttered and he almost retched at the realization of what his stupid thoughtless actions had put Rose through. The blood making its statement on the blanket and melting off the pole into a puddle on the TARDIS floor was a different colour than the blood on Rose's backpack. He checked it with the sonic, and then he did gag–while he had lain in his smug uncaring Time Lord healing trance, Rose Tyler had kept him from becoming a R'rung Cat's dinner. He really was a bloody stupid arse, just like she'd said, and a smug unresponsive sod!

–just like she'd said…

When he walked through Rose Tyler's shower room door a few minutes later, the first thing the Doctor really noticed was how the water dripping off Rose's face and hair came together in slow gentle rivulets down her wet skin, growing tiny puddles on the floor around her.

Puddles of water around her feet, growing like the puddles of blood around those bleeding poles in the console room.

The Doctor shook himself free of a vice of horror and guilt to look at Rose, and she was naked, and he was so tired of being a bloody stupid arse.

"D..Doctor," Rose asked haltingly, "what's wrong?"

"I brought… I…Rose, I thought you might want your bandages back." The Doctor held out Rose's black silk teddy, repaired and whole again.

_"Shazzam presto chango,"_ Rose said under her breath.

"Regenerated."

"What?"

"Not _shazzam."_ The Doctor smiled at Rose Tyler. "It's called regeneration. I shouldn't have treated you like a child, Rose; you are nothing like a child, except maybe in how open you are to new experiences, how accepting of change. It's regeneration. That's one of the answers I owe you, maybe not the whole twenty you wanted, but at least what I remember hearing you ask. Yes, I was trying to heal, at least the first time I actually remember you talking to me. I was in a light trance, concentrating. Your voice pierced it."

"Oh! I'm sorry."

The Doctor shook his head quickly. "Don't be. I was an unresponsive sod before; gonna make it up to you now." His eyes caught Rose's, caught her reaction. He marveled that he could make her feel like she made him.

"Yes, the process is nothing like a picnic on Barcelona. Yes, I can survive my hearts stopping or a broken neck, or no I can't, depending on what the cause of it is. Javelin, poison, spray of bullets–I'd regenerate. My body would change. Different appearance, a whole new-looking person probably, a new set of bloody stupid arse Time Lord character flaws for you to lay into me about." He grinned. "But I, the person I am–who I am inside–Rose, all of that would go on.

'"Course I don't know if _bloody stupid arse_ is just one of your pet names for me, Rose Tyler, or if there's a question implied, and I think I'd rather not address it right now if you don't mind." He put his hand up and shook his head to stop her commenting.

"Yes to freezing, though I'd probably freeze again after I regenerated, and my new body would be weak and not able to ward off the effects as well as the previous; so I'd be in worse shape. And, no, once it starts regeneration can't be stopped. Being ripped apart by whatever it was you had to fight: I doubt it strongly, and I'd rather not test the hypothesis. Definitely wouldn't have survived that python's digestive juices. It's a very good thing you found that setting on the sonic screwdriver. I'll show you how to get to it quickly; it sets up a modulating vibratory field, creating a safety zone within a sphere of sound waves aimed outward, and it's very uncomfortable to walk through.

"So I can't survive being eaten alive by a wild animal. Unless you meant… " The Doctor blushed. He wondered if the cold had gotten to him after all or, more likely, if Rose's fragrance on the black lace had … And it didn't help, or maybe it did, that Rose had poked her tongue between her lips and smiled as if she knew just what he was thinking and was enjoying the idea of it herself. "Might not survive something like that either." He shrugged, but his eyes sparked at the thought.

"I'd never laugh myself to death at the sight of the most beautiful woman I've ever met doing one of the most intelligent things I've ever seen to keep someone alive; so that is a resounding _NO_." The Doctor put his hand to his cheek, scrunching up his eyes, and considered. "Kinda felt once as if I had been slapped into the next century, and I'm still me… Don't want to test things with another Tyler slap; so I'd better be on good behaviour just in case because, as I said, regeneration can't be stopped, or reversed. Though I wouldn't mind so much being slapped into the next century as long as you'll come after me.

"And the things that are important, really important to keep feeling, I would feel the same, yes. Maybe the next me wouldn't be such an unresponsive sod, but given my history as a bloody great wanker, I wouldn't bet on it; think I'd still need that slapping.

"Like I told ya before, Rose Tyler, a Time Lord may well live indefinitely, if he takes care of his body, or bodies. If he can find someone to take care of him who is intelligent, caring, loving, resourceful, fantastic, and not afraid to face any kind of beast who confronts her, however many legs the wanker might have, and doesn't mind looking ridiculous while doing so, then he will be lucky indeed; because as long as she is with him, he'll know what living is. Oh, Rose, she'll give him a kind of _forever_ that is so much better than any other."

The Doctor caressed Rose Tyler's cheek and she shivered.

"You're getting cold," he said. "Finish your shower, and I'll make us some tea." He turned to leave, limping a bit, stiff and sore just a bit, and wearing a smile that felt more alien to him than it looked to Rose.

"Doctor, you didn't answer all the questions," Rose almost whispered, she almost shouted.

"Ah. Right."

He walked back, leaned against the shower door, and looked at Rose Tyler solemnly. "Yes, but that word is far too small for the answer. Yes–oh Rose, of course yes! No, but I'm sure I will in a bit, if you don't mind waiting and taking it slow, just until my assorted aches are healed. Does that work for you, Rose Tyler? 'Cause it works for me."

"Last answer: yes." The Doctor gave Rose Tyler a little push back under the hot water as he loosened her towel and let it fall to the floor. He chucked his clothes in a heap atop the towel and stepped into the shower, into Rose's arms.

"Yes," the Doctor's lips told Rose's. The word, big enough at last, sang from his hearts into hers.

 

~~

 

 

 

 

* * *

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